


Good At Starting Over

by deathwailart



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Female Friendship, First Meetings, Gen, Post-War, Rebuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 17:22:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1907454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war is over and Grissom Academy and the people left start over on a colony, Oriana Lawson is their developer and Jack makes another fresh start. </p>
<p>Written for the prompt: Jack and Oriana Lawson meeting for the first time</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good At Starting Over

In the end they can selfishly say that the war was a good thing for biotics if they're forced to take any positives from the sort of war they had with the Reapers. The most famous human biotic in Commander Saoirse Shepard backed up by her fellow Spectre and partner Kaidan Alenko. A support squad of the best and brightest headed by none other than Jack herself and who knew that enough biotics working together could actually create a bubble strong enough to keep husks at bay as they tended their wounded? Jack's damn proud of her kids – kids with nice shiny medals on their chests and they all joke that she's going to have to branch out into piercings because she's running out of room for more ink. But the war ends and they have to look to the future so it means packing them up and finding somewhere safe to put them. The first few years of Grissom Academy post-war are hunkering down and finding new applications for biotics in the rebuilding – helping with heavy lifting, clearing out rubble, catching people if they fall. They decide against space. It's a new era for humanity and the galactic community and yeah, their future is in space but this is about integrating them into society so they end up on a colony. The colonials themselves are only too happy to have the sort of security biotics provide and before they get up the school prefabs they're staying with them and by the time there's a shell for them to move into, Jack knows way more about organic beans than she ever wanted to.  
  
Food's good. Locals are probably rubbing their hands at that too; everyone knows just how much biotics eat.  
  
Jack didn't think she'd like it but she has to admit that it feels good to be on a world that isn't still uncovering and identifying their dead. It's untouched, raw and new. Not the blasted out concrete and steel skeleton of London. She might have been here before, probably with Shepard on one of those missions where they blasted mercs or weird alien wildlife into oblivion. Warm, almost balmy, rock formations that she wants them to run drills on because they need to have their stamina up and the river by them is deep enough to break their fall. Plus no one can have a water fight like a group of biotics can.  
  
It does mean developing and it's still weird for her, to be listened to and respected, asked an opinion but she revels in, grinning and helping to sketch out just the sort of reinforcements walls need if they're going to have to deal with biotic kids.  
  
"The ones that end up as vanguards? Yeah, sometimes the kids sneeze so hard they put themselves through walls. _Lots_ of reinforcements, got it?"  
  
The woman in charge is young, younger than Jack but older than most of the students, mostly the original squad who aren't really students now, probably the next generation of instructors but they're still here, Kahlee too, David and Prangley and Rodriguez, pretty much everyone who made it off the station because like hell Jack was going to lose them in the war. There's something familiar about her face but then again Jack's sure she's met half the galaxy by this point in her life so she ignores it and listens when Kahlee discusses just how many dorms they'll need, the medical suite they should have too, the labs. Lots of ship crashes during the war and there's no way they're going to have the data to accurately predict the levels of eezo exposure but between Earth, ships and colonies? Chances are that the numbers are going to be off the charts and this time, Kahlee tells her one night when they're sitting out front in the prefab, Eezo dozing with his head on Jack's thigh, they're going to do it right. No more treating children like experiments, no more pushing them to their limits, no more amps that turned them towards cults and violence. Kahlee's probably the only other person besides Saoirse she gets all mushy around and she blinks back her tears, clinking her glass against Kahlee's when she chokes out her hell yeah.  
  
They might be prefabs and sleeping on army beds and having to set up pyjak traps but they've got working communications – it's something everyone insisted on after the war, making sure they could all stay in touch safely because no one wants to risk losing anyone else. Saoirse and Kaidan are still on Earth because rehab is a bitch and they're the big shiny heroes of humanity but it means she can catch them both at once and Kaidan's even more interested in hearing about the developments than Saoirse. Jack gets it. Nothing can compare to Pragia but Jack knows the stories about just how rough even the legit programs were for the first human biotics so she sends files, asks Kaidan for recommendations, jokes about him and Saoirse coming out to teach and then he does his 'aww shucks' routine and she laughs so hard she wakes Eezo. Saoirse's leaning over Kaidan's shoulder at the end of the call when she asks about the progress they're making with building out on this colony.  
  
"Did Miranda say her sister was working out there?" Saoirse asks and Kaidan furrows his brow – there's a lot of brow to furrow too – and finally nods and the pieces slot into place for Jack.  
  
"Wait, Cheerleader's sister is out here?"  
  
"Oriana, yeah," Saoirse confirms, her blue outline flickering for a moment. "I don't know how much they keep in touch but if you get a moment, tell her Miranda's fine, she's pretty much Alliance now, just waiting on the paperwork."  
  
"They'll let anyone in these days," Jack jokes because hell if they let _her_ in to teach kids and shape formative young minds in how to blow shit up then as much as she might have hated to admit it, they've got an asset in Miranda. She signs off because it's late here and she has to go check in and do the rounds because she's actually become some weird mother varren to everyone and she can't sleep until she's checked the security systems and made sure they're all where they should be and that no one is having a nightmare and needs her to come tell them it'll be okay. Miranda in the Alliance and the thing is that the past can't be changed. Not really. She's not going to forget how it felt to be a scared little girl at the mercy of Cerberus. She's not going to forget the experiments, the drugs, the way she would hide and cry, the fucked up mess it turned her life into but she's got a place in the universe now.  
  
A lot of people moved on. The krogan got their cure and now them and the turians seem pretty tight. Jack's at peace with herself as much as she'll ever be and Miranda...hell, this war handed them all a do-over, a nice clean slate, Jack's not going to hold onto her grudge. They put that away at that big stupid party Saoirse had in that apartment and hell, Miranda even ended up fighting alongside Jack at points back on Earth and they traded off looking after the students. Jack's got Eezo, she's got her students and this crazy role in actually helping to give them the safe place she never had to figure out who they are and what they're about. Jack gets to go to bed at night without a gun and knife under the pillow and the mattress. Okay they're still there but she doesn't wake up with her heart pounding, reaching for them automatically. She gets to wake up and stretch, go for a run before breakfast with Eezo, have breakfast and laugh with everyone, lessons and biotiball to kick back, drinks with Kahlee and looking over schematics. Varren helper dogs or whatever – they moved in and Jack's got Eezo so she gets it, gets why sometimes people need to take some time alone with one or a whole pile, talking out whatever's stuck in their head with no judgement, just that weird rumbling noise the things make whenever you scratch under the chins when you talk to them. Jack's got a life that's all hers, Alliance stability and funding behind her. Miranda deserves that too.  
  
"Hey," she says the next morning, hair still wet from a dip in the river courtesy of Eezo, holding her breakfast tray as Oriana – when she looks now she can see the resemblance better. The same full lips only Oriana looks like someone more prone to smiling, same with the eyes. "Mind if I sit?"  
  
"Go ahead," Oriana replies, moving a stack of datapads out of the way.  
  
"Got a message to pass on from you from Sao- Shepard," Jack continues and Oriana's eyes go wide. "Nothing bad! We were talking, I just didn't realise that you and Miranda were sisters – she's fine, might wanna book a trip back to Earth soon, plan her a surprise party."  
  
Jack tucks into whatever it is for breakfast – looks gross, tastes great, definitely keeps you going until lunch but it looks really fucking gross so she usually has to talk to someone or read so she doesn't glance down at the bowl of what someone described as looking like a mix of jellied hanar, fish eggs and eyeballs – but Oriana's smile gets even bigger and Jack can't help it.  
  
"So I'm Jack, probably should've made real introductions but usually people know who I am and half of them run screaming."  
  
"Oriana Lawson, I've heard a lot about you."  
  
"Most of it bad?"  
  
"Most of it unbelievable."  
  
It's a start. And hey, Jack's getting pretty damn good at those.

**Author's Note:**

> This was really meant to be much more about those two talking and meeting but I love Jack in ME3 and how much she's moved on and grown as a person and I ended up just really enjoying the ending where they 'officially' met. I'm hoping to write more of this (and a lot more of the Lawson sisters that'll connect to this piece) in the very near future! Also I'm super attached to the idea of therapet varren as someone who grew up with dogs that were therapets for elderly people.


End file.
